Tag: Intolerable Acts

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The Frankford Advice: “Place Virginia at the Head of Everything”

Since James Thomas Flexner’s 1974 Pulitzer recognition for his biography of George Washington, one of the axioms of the American founding is that the general, George Washington, was the “indispensable man.”[1] The selection, therefore, of Washington as the commander of the Continental Army was undoubtedly among the most critical decisions in the history of the […]

by Richard Gardiner
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Williamsburg on the Eve of War

A visitor to Williamsburg prior to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War would have discovered a city of just 1,900 inhabitants, roughly 900 of whom were white and free and the remaining 1,000 black and mostly enslaved.1 These were the year-round inhabitants who lived in the several hundred wooden and brick dwellings that sat upon […]

by Michael Cecere
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1774: The Long Year of Revolution

1774: The Long Year of Revolution by Mary Beth Norton (Knopf, 2020) Although previous works have tried to draw attention to “The Missing 16 Months” between the Boston Tea Party in December of 1773 and the Battle of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775, Cornell history professor Mary Beth Norton argues in her latest […]

by Alec D. Rogers
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“Intolerable Acts”

I started with an innocent question about the British Parliament’s Quartering Act of 1774: Did American Patriots list that law as one of the “Intolerable Acts” that led them to outright rebellion against Great Britain? Some of the Revolutionary histories I’d read said that was one of the five Intolerable Acts, along with the Boston […]

by J. L. Bell